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Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
D. J. Euh, B. G. Huh, B. J. Yun, C.-H. Song, I. G. Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 164 | Number 3 | December 2008 | Pages 368-384
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT164-368
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The reflood rate in a core is an important parameter for core cooling during a large-break loss-of-coolant-accident (LBLOCA) reflood period, and it strongly depends on the thermal-hydraulic conditions in the downcomer. During this period, downcomer boiling has an important influence on the transient behavior of a postulated LBLOCA because it can degrade the hydraulic head in a downcomer and consequently affect the reflood flow rate for core cooling. Although it is recognized that downcomer boiling is critical to correctly predict the reflood phenomena of an LBLOCA transient, especially for a direct vessel injection adapted system like the advanced power reactor APR1400, the amount of experimental data and code assessment in this area is relatively limited. To improve the state of knowledge relative to downcomer boiling, a test program at the Downcomer Boiling (DOBO) facility is progressing for the reflood phase of a postulated LBLOCA. The DOBO facility was designed to meet a full scale for the height and gap of a reactor downcomer. The DOBO test revealed a strong multidimensional boiling behavior, which induces the need for performance evaluation of the best-estimate codes that are used to analyze a nuclear reactor's thermal-hydraulic safety, since they have mostly been used for one-dimensional system behavior. In this study, RELAP, MARS, and TRACE are evaluated by using measured two-phase-flow data. Based on the assessments, the modeling capability and weak points of the safety analysis codes are addressed for multidimensional downcomer boiling phenomena. Two models for a downcomer are considered to assess the codes for the DOBO tests, which are also applied to a plant analysis.